My kind publishers, Toby Mundy and Margaret Stead of Atlantic Books, have commissioned me to write the life of Queen Victoria.
I wish I'd been better able to resist the sense of obligation to write some of the poems I did. It's in the nature of commissioned work to be written too much from the side of your mind that knows what it's doing, which dries up the poetry.
We commissioned an independent statutory economic body - the Productivity Commission - to review the possibility of funding a disability scheme. The commission returned with a view that it could. Then it becomes an issue of national will.
One of the dilemmas of architecture in general is that there is a Catch-22 - you can't actually get to be commissioned to do certain types of building until you've already built that type of building. So it seems to be incredibly hard to get going.
Quite a few operas are still being commissioned around the world, although nothing apart from audience popularity can ensure more than a few performances.
My countrymen have commissioned a bust of the Republic. It will be placed on the fountain of my native town.
Every film you're commissioned to write is all about an arc; usually, the arc is that the world creates a change in the character, usually for the better. To not have an arc, the messages and ideas in the film became more prominent.
I've commissioned an adaptation of 'The Jungle', by Upton Sinclair, a story of a young immigrant from Lithuania to the meat-packing industry of Chicago in 1904, and the rise of the unions in America.
I thought I had a huge crush on a young Canadian photographer who was commissioned to go down to Australia to do a series, so I tried to figure out a way to follow him without getting in trouble with my parents, and that was by auditioning for their National Institute.